Lynch at Lockbourne, 1953

by Lynch on May 25, 2011

Michael Lynch took a Stepping Back in Time while dong the one lap of Marin, and briefly recalled watching the races at Lockbourne AFB outside of Columbus Ohio in 1953. With the help of Doug Chadwick’s photo collection, Lynch put captions to the photos below.

Not many single seaters were seen in early SCCA racing. This is Woodie Garber’s Alfa 308 at Lockbourne. Even then, it was well traveled, having participated in European Grands Prix, U.S. ARCA racing, the Indianapolis 500 and the Pikes Peak Hillclimb. It did not finish.

Lockbourne AFB, 1953. Here’s one of the great Italians of the 50s in U.S. racing. This is Fritz Koster’s Maserati A6GCS. It won its class in the main event that day and was later owned by historian/auto executive Karl Ludvigsen. It now is back in the Koster family and is still racing.

Again, this Bugatti is just another car in the car park, although some of the juveniles present seem to think it’s neat.

Now you have to go to Pebble Beach to see something like this Delahaye. In the old days they were simply parked among the spectator fleet.

Here’s a photo op if there ever was one. This XK-120 Jag won the standard production category driven by Roger Wing.

This was an MG special commissioned by Dave Uihlein, the scion of an old Milwaukee beer family and a relative of Augie Pabst. Dave liked road racing cars, but his passion was Indianapolis cars from Harry Miller forward. Perhaps his greatest legacy was the founding of the Miller/Offenhauser Society with my old high school buddy, Bob Sutherland. The group still puts on a vintage meet featuring hot laps for Indy cars at the Milwaukee Mile that is a great spectacle, especially since most Indy car collectors unfortunately do not race their cars.

This is likely the Briggs Cunningham 750cc Siata that won its class and the Index of Performance at the Vero Beach 12 Hours in 1952. It was driven at Lockbourne by George Roberts.

A rare situation in the U.S. where two 1400cc Siata Gran Sports were pitted together. Number 36 was W.L. Adams and the unnumbered car is likely Robert T. Keller. Neither made an impression.

This Jag Special was the brainchild of driver John Fitch and artist Coby Whitmore, best known for his Saturday Evening Post covers. Whitmore owned the car and Fitch oversaw the transformation that took 800 pounds out of it, much from a lightweight body done by Andy Salada. The car was well thought out and fast in class, but after its first season, Fitch joined the Cunningham team and it was never driven as well.

This is the C-Type of Masten Gregory at Lockbourne. After being black flagged at Chanute AFB earlier in the season, Masten tweaked the SCCA’s nose by using black flags as a background for his race numbers.

Thanks for the photos and memories of the first major sportscar race that I attended. There was an announced 114000 spectators. The 1954 race was even better with the Cunningham team and several Ferraris.

Wonderful presentation here, thanks. I still have not come up with the name of the gentleman who sent me these negatives, but I am looking. I did come across the negatives this morning (these scans were done from the contact sheets) so I am guessing the envelope with his return address is in the same pile.
Imagine my surprise when someone comes in my drive, looks at me working on my Elan and offers to send me some “old negatives he has no use for”. And imagine my further surprise months, or maybe a year later when a small envelope shows up in my PO box. I open it immediately, and start looking at negatives. MG, MG, and now what’s this, a Bugatti 35 in street trim! And a few more and the Koster Maserati turns up, a car I knew of from Karl Ludvigsen’s article in Road & Track.
What a find, and it’s been fun to share them.

@Jerry Lehrer, I don’t have a picture of a Siata with that number, but I have a number of Siatas that perhaps do not yet have numbers. Pete and I guess that these pictures were done on the first day of the event, so cars were not all numbered yet. And Jerry, is the Porsche Continental in one of the Maserati A6GCS pictures John Bentley’s?
@ Fred Puhn, I don’t know about the Tam’s site, but a lot of these pictures are on the Etceterini site, click the link on this page or Google “Doug Chadwick Lockbourne”

Kudos to Michael T. Lynch and Doug Chadwick for bringing such wonderful photos to life again. It was even more interesting for me as I was stationed at Lockbourne (now called Rickenbacker) in 1965 and recognize some of the buildings as I was a maintenance officer and roamed the hangars and flight line. I’ve always wished photos like these would just drop into my hands as it appears to have done in Doug’s case. I find them priceless…

Simply awesome to see those great shots of my old A6GCS. It stands as one of the very last cars to have the grille shape that Maseratis had before and after the war. A great little machine that both Koster and I drove to and from the races on the road.

I was going to say seeing these cars has made my day but it’s more like has (almost) made my year. Thank you, Doug, for the link. R&T ran my story “Racing Spirits” once upon a time (illustrated by the great Ken Dallison) and some of these machines would have blended right in.